More Articles

Control of publicly owned Nationwide Arena has been transferred to a private, nonprofit board, a transition that could shield its operation from taxpayers and restrict access to public records.

The Franklin County Convention Facilities Authority, created and governed by county commissioners and the city of Columbus, has given control of the arena to Columbus Arena Management, or CAM, the authority’s executive director, Bill Jennison, said.

The management group consists of a four-member board that includes Columbus Blue Jackets president Mike Priest, Jennison and a representative each from Nationwide Insurance and Ohio State University.

The group will operate in private, Jennison said, to allocate an estimated $250 million in casino-tax revenue that the city and county dedicated to the arena’s purchase and up-keep through 2039.

“The CAM is a private entity,” Jennison said. “The budget will be transparent, and that will be available to the public.”That’s not enough, city and county leaders said.Mayor Michael B. Coleman said through his chief of staff on Friday that he expects “everything the CAM does on behalf of the authority will be subject to the same open-records requirements.”County commissioners Paula Brooks and John O’Grady said they were unaware that CAM would operate in private. Brooks said she expects “complete transparency from the (facilities authority)” when it comes to owning and operating the arena.Columbus City Council President Andrew Ginther would say only that he is confident in CAM’s ability to run the day-to-day operations of the arena.“This is a public asset that everyone wants to be successful,” Ginther said.

Records kept by the secretary of state’s office show that CAM filed articles of organization on March 28 — the same day the facilities authority officially approved the purchase of the arena.

Priest was the only person to sign the articles. He was unavailable for comment late last week.

Jennison said the facilities authority will oversee CAM’s operation, but to what extent remains unclear.

Some authority board members said there have been no discussions of how they will oversee CAM. They were surprised by Jennison’s comments that the nonprofit will operate in private.

“It certainly doesn’t pass the smell test,” said John Raphael, who serves on the facilities-authority board. “We obviously need to have some discussions about this.”

The authority is run by an 11-member board whose members mostly are appointed by the city and county commissioners to oversee the convention center. The group is subject to state open-records and open-meetings laws.

The state’s open-meetings law says that any board, commission or committee or subcommittee or “similar decision-making body” of a local or state agency must make its meetings public.

The Ohio Revised Code also states that the business of a convention authority must be conducted in public and is subject to open-records law.

Since Franklin County created the convention authority, it is considered a public decision-making body.

Attorney General Mike DeWine’s office declined to comment on the issue.

“Of course this is a violation of the (open-meetings) law, ... and it’s meant to avoid public accountability,” said David Marburger, a Cleveland lawyer and open-government advocate. “Imagine if I owned my house and I transfer it by lease to a nonprofit organization for a year and suddenly the nonprofit is saying I am not allowed to see how they are using my house.”

Marburger said recent Ohio Supreme Court rulings opened the door for local governments to hire private, nonprofit groups and claim that they are not subject to public scrutiny.

In a 2006 ruling, the state Supreme Court established four criteria to determine whether an entity is a public body:

• Does it perform a governmental function?

• To what extent does its funding come from government?

• To what extent does the government control the day-to-day performance of its activities?

• Was it created by the government to avoid the Public Records Act?

As part of the agreement, the facilities authority has given CAM the OK to enter into all business contracts related to the arena.

To fulfill its management responsibilities, the authority also gave CAM the “power and authority” to operate, manage, maintain, repair and improve the arena through the length of the purchase agreement.

“It pains me to see this happening,” Marburger said. “Not only do you have public funds being used, but now the public has little authority to decide how to use a huge and expensive publicly owned facility.”